A number of parties in the Western Cape have trotted out the worn election trope of a “one-stop shop” for investments, aimed at making government application and approval processes easier for small- and medium-sized businesses.
This Business Report reporter has covered most of the national elections in some form or another as a journalist since 1994, and can attest to the fact that all manner of parties, including the ANC, have trotted out promises of the “one-stop shop”.
However, while it is an idea viewed favourably by many business commentators, these “one-stop shops” never happen, and in fact political parties soon get back to berating business for not following procedures, or doing things without proper consultation, both with the authorities and communities.
Last Friday, senior representatives from most of the political parties contesting the elections in the Western Cape gathered at Artscape in Cape Town to discuss the problems of unemployment and crime in the province.
Present were representatives of the ruling party in the province, the DA; the official opposition in the province, the ANC; as well as the ACDP, EFF, Rise Msanzi, National Coloured Congress, Build One South Africa, Good Party and Al Jama-ah.
The DA’s Reagen Allen said Statistics SA data showed the province had the highest level of employment out of the provinces, but the party nevertheless knew “there is still a long way to go in reducing unemployment” and it was doing all it could to make it easier to work in the province because “a job is the one way of ensuring our youth don’t end up on the conveyor belt to gangsterism”.
The DA’s claim the Western Cape has the highest employment rate among provinces was contested by other parties, with Good Party leader Patricia de Lille saying that while the DA would like people to believe eight out of ten people found work in the region, in fact only two out of ten were working.
She said that while the province’s economy might be working for a few, it was certainly not a growing economy for poor people, which was why the party was advocating a basic income grant.
De Lille said that since 1994, many parties had claimed to have created one million or even two million jobs, “but this is a lie”. She said the ANC-led government had failed to implement its policies, and economic growth could only be created through a partnership between the government and private sector to create jobs.
Another common concern among parties in respect to the economy and crime was the prevalence of extortion and the so-called construction mafias. The Rise Mzansi party said it would strengthen crime intelligence resources to tackle these two problems.
National Coloured Congress (NCC) premier candidate Fadiel Adams said the people benefiting from the construction mafias were the same construction companies that won most of the provincial tenders. He cited an example where a construction company gave a gang leader a R2 million tender for security on a construction site, and said these companies were effectively stealing from the poor.
He said Coloured people built the province, but under the current government they were not considered good enough to work in the province anymore, and the NCC would introduce demographic representation requirements to black empowerment work quotas and targets legislation.
Further, when companies wanted to mine on the coast they were permitted to do so by the government, but when Coloured people wished to live on the coast, there were suddenly “ecological reports why we can’t move in”.
Adams said the government’s fishing policies favoured big companies and had reduced once-sustainable fishing communities in the Western Cape, such as those in Saldanha Bay and Hout Bay, to having to resort to poaching to survive.
On the ease of doing business, particularly for small businesses, Adams said that under the DA in the province, the police walked past street vendors from other countries selling fake good on the streets and did nothing, but when “an aunty sells samoosas in Gatesville, her samoosas and all her equipment are confiscated”.
EFF provincial assembly member Nazir Paulsen said the tender system was to blame for creating conditions for corruption and the construction mafias, and the EFF intended to instead establish a large state-owned construction company to build houses and infrastructure. Its size would be such that it would provide jobs for a large number of unemployed people. He said that should the EFF win the election, it would ensure construction companies no longer worked for the state.
BUSINESS REPORT